e.

"Lieutenant Cantor," returned the executive officer, dryly, "a
careful officer will allow himself sufficient margin of time to
make it morally certain that he can be back to his duty on time.
Now, sir-----"

But at this moment an apprentice messenger, standing in the doorway,
his right hand drawn up in salute, attracted the gaze of Commander
Bainbridge:

"The captain" compliments, sir; will the executive officer report
to him at once."

"That is all---for the present---Lieutenant Cantor," said Commander
Bainbridge, rising from his chair and hastening out.

"And all this, on account of a puppy of a junior who will not
use sense and reason at the request of a superior officer!" ground
Cantor between his teeth. "I shall pay Darrin for this, and for
that greater insult, too."

Some minutes before the call to breakfast was due, Darrin and
Dalzell appeared from their quarters and walked aft to where a
group of the "_Long Island's_" officers stood. Three or four
of them had newspapers in their hands.

"It's time the government did something!" exclaimed one lieutenant
commander, testily.

"We're going to do something, soon," asserted another officer,
with a snap of his jaws.

"When?" demanded a third officer, while several men laughed derisively.

"We'll have to," continued the second speaker. "Every day the
Mexican situation becomes worse. The usurper, Huerta, is becoming
more of a menace all the time. He has no regard for the rights
of any one, but himself. And he is unable to do more, in the
field, than to accept defeat after defeat at the hands of the
rebels under that former bandit chief, 'Pancho' Villa. Both the
so-called Federals and the rebels, in Mexico, are doing their
best to make Mexico a hotbed of incurable anarchy. Scores of
American citizens have been murdered ruthlessly, and American
women have been roughly treated. British subjects have been shot
without the shadow of an excuse, and other foreigners have been
maltreated. This country claims to uphold the Monroe Doctrine,
which prevents European nations from interfering with force in
affairs on this continent. If that is the case, then the United
States must put an end to the numberless outrages against Americans
and Europeans that take place every week in Mexico. That once
orderly republic, Mexico, is now nothing better than a school
for instruction in wholesale murder and in the ruthless riding
over of the rights of all aliens r